Knowing and the Mystique of Logic and Rules: Including True Statements in Knowing and Action * Compu

Human knowing is examined as it emerges from classical empirical psychology, with its ramifications into language, computing, science, and scholarship. While the discussion takes empirical support from a wide range, claims for the significance of logic and rules are challenged throughout. Highlights of the discussion:

• knowing is a matter of habits or dispositions that guide the person's stream of consciousness;
• rules of language have no significance in language production and understanding, being descriptions of linguistic styles;
• statements that may be true or false enter into ordinary linguistic activity, not as elements of messages, but merely as summaries of situations, with a view to action;
• in computer programming the significance of logic, proof, and formalized description, is incidental and subject to the programmer's personality;
• analysis of computer modelling of the mental activity shows that in describing human knowing the computer is irrelevant;
• in accounting for the scholarly/scientific activity, logic and rules are impotent;
• a novel theory: scholarship and science have coherent descriptions as their core.

The discussion addresses questions that are basic to advanced applications of computers and to students of language and science.